


The Art of Things That Stick

by sachantquiladesailes_98



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Also depressing, And definitely psychological, And so does Betty Cooper people!, Angst, Angst and Feels, Archie Andrews Needs a Hug, Canon Compliant, Demons of Childhood, F/M, Growing Up, If repeating the same phrases/ ideas but with a different angsty context to them is your thing..., It's a bumpy ride, It's pretty darn angsty people, Jughead Jones Needs a Hug, Teen Angst, Until it sticks, Up to s2e10, With a sad ending, a bit philosophical, mostly - Freeform, prepare yourselves, this is the fic for you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 15:55:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13814499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sachantquiladesailes_98/pseuds/sachantquiladesailes_98
Summary: This was originally just supposed to be a blurb post break up about how it actually stuck and Jughead kinda lost himself etc. etc. and then it escalated into this in depth look at Archie and Jug and Betty's childhood and growing up and everybody's issues and character and... now it's huge and a bit philosophical and a lot psychological and terribly depressing. It's still good, don't get me wrong. Just heavy. Just so long as you all know what you're getting into. ;)





	The Art of Things That Stick

When Jughead and Betty first meet, it is with both a great unwillingness and a fierce desire to claim the coveted position of ‘the _best_ friend’ for themselves. Jughead only has one friend and, with school starting next week, he can’t afford to be demoted by a _girl_ of all people. Betty, on the other hand, has many friends- she’s the sort of person who attracts people like a magnet- but Archie is the only one who wants to climb trees and draw things in the mud _and_ play house with her. This is a rare quality, and one she is loath to lose.

Jughead knows all about Betty. She cleans and sings and gardens- for fun no less- and she always smiles, and she had curtsied when she met him. He distrusts each of these qualities individually, and _all_ of them in one person is just too much. And, while Betty always tries to be as nice as she can be, she has heard Jughead’s name from Archie one too many times- usually whenever she casually drops the words ‘the _best_ friend’- and he had responded to her perfectly friendly greeting by informing her that her dress is ‘entirely too grandiloquent’. (Betty didn’t even know what that meant, and she was certain he knew it from the smirk he gave her in response to her confused gratitude).

And now they stand here in dead silence, two feet apart from each other in the Andrews’ backyard, one unwilling to further the connection and the other unable to. Both throw a pleading look to the redhead perched on the porch swing, looking as proud as if he had figured out how to tie his shoes. (Betty had tried to show him, but the poor boy got lost when bunnies were suddenly and inexplicably involved. Jughead told him that Velcro shoes existed just for people like him and, if he didn’t use them, he was depriving the shoemakers of their sole market. Archie didn’t understand that either.)

Archie is the sort of person who believes the very best of all people in all situations- and not because of any deep or inspirational reasoning. Anything else has just never occurred to him. So, in response to his friends’ desperation, he hops off the swing, and pulls them both into a three-way hug, declaring that ‘now that you’ve met, we can _all_ be friends together’.

And so, the two separate duos become a reluctant trio, despite the fact that Betty and Jughead seem to have little in common beyond their shared (bordering on irrational) determination to preserve their relationship with their red-haired friend- regardless of the cost.

 

Archie likes Jughead because his mom had made sure that he would. In a way perhaps not entirely fair to the young and impressionable Archie Andrews, his mother had said all the right things at all the right times so that, when Archie finally meets Mr. Jones’ kid, he gazes at him in awe for a full minute, before Jughead shifts uncomfortably and Archie is snapped out of his daze to practically beg the boy to come and see his tree fort behind the construction office.

It’s hard to say what would have happened without Mary Andrews. Jughead was the only kid in his house and his parents consistently told him that he was ‘a very special boy’. As a result, he thought the world of himself and responded well to idolization. Perhaps if Archie had been even a degree cooler than he was, Jughead would have planted himself firmly on the couch with the book he’d smuggled in despite his father’s instructions and things might have gone very differently… or perhaps connections like these happen anyway despite the interference of the most meddlesome mothers. As it was, Jughead was completely charmed and Archie felt as if he had gained a superstar for a friend.

Jughead and Archie became relatively inseparable. They had very little in common but Jughead had to come to work with Dad “just for a bit, until things settle down, I promise, Jug” and since Archie was practically attached to his own father, they spent nearly all their time together. And somehow it worked. Jughead was bossy and decisive, Archie was pliable and passive, and they both genuinely cared for the other. Little more is needed to form a connection at that age. Archie was small then too, a full head shorter than Jughead, and when Mr. Jones called his friend ‘Forsythe’ after they accidentally tracked mud all over the office, all it took was a glare from the bigger boy for the issue of his name to never be mentioned among them again.

Jughead has 17 days on Betty when it comes to being Archie’s friend, which is practically a lifetime. Jughead already knew Archie's favorite book- “Pigs”, his favorite movie- “Home Alone”, his preferred music- “music for dancing”, his most prized possession- “the fort obviously”, and his plan in case of an apocalypse- “I would go find you and we would live in the fort”. What else do you need for a solid friendship?

So when Archie shows up 17 days after the one where they decided to be friends for life- 18 days after the one where they met- blathering about his neighbour who started an impromptu dance party with him and has assured him that she would provide the cookies for the fort in case of apocalypse, Jughead is less then pleased. 21 days after, she has invited him to watch Home Alone- “even the second one, Jug,- and 22 days after, he is informed that she has “all of the Robert Munsch books that exist probably and she does the funniest voices when she reads them aloud”. From then on, every day is filled with raptures about Archie’s neighbour Betty who is “cool, even as a girl”- a high compliment indeed, considering the self-imposed,  _strict_ \- at least, before any mention of cookies- ban on girls at the fort.

It’s actually Jughead’s suggestion to meet her- a sarcastic suggestion, but a suggestion none the less. She’s prettier than he expects her to be. He swears to her years later that that really was his first thought upon meeting her; she looked like the angel in the painting his mom had bought to protect him when he first started having nightmares… ethereal almost….

But then she curtsied, and he decided he hated her.

He’s made a plan; in fact, he’d flipped the angel painting around and scrawled it on the backside. In two weeks, if all goes according to his plan, Archie and Jughead will be fleeing as fast as their legs can go and Betty, unable to follow in her ridiculous little outfits, will be forced to watch them go.

 

Jughead has always known that there is a distinct difference between him and most of the kids his mom wants him to hang out with, but it has never concerned him. Archie doesn’t seem to care and even Betty hadn’t seemed too horrified by him. So he finds himself completely unprepared for the utter disdain of his classmates, which sets in shortly after school begins, all of them so firmly prejudiced despite their young age.

If that wasn’t enough, he was going to get a baby sister, and this was apparently a Very Bad Thing. His parents had taken to screaming lately and his mom had stopped buying the good snacks or asking him if he needed school supplies. Nobody has told him that he’s a special boy in a long while. In fact, neither parent interacts much with him at all anymore. He’s not sure if it’s the constant contempt of his peers or the increasing neglect of his parents, but he finds that somewhere along the way he also has come to think much less of himself and when Reggie Mantle throws his book in the mud, shoves him down and calls him garbage, the retort that springs to his lips withers away in a flood of doubt and insecurity: emotions that, once so foreign to him, are now his constant companions.

Archie can usually protect him from the more physical side of the irrational hatred of his classmates, but Archie is in Chicago with his mom for the weekend for a reason unclear to supposedly everyone and, when Jughead had felt sick this morning, his mom’s lips had pressed together so tightly they had almost disappeared and Jughead had undergone a miraculous recovery. He’d resigned himself to a day of mockery and potentially even physical pain and so, he is beyond surprised when Betty Cooper, dressed like a mini Marie Antoinette, clambers into the mud to rescue his book. She rubs it off furiously on her pale pink ruffles, staining them permanently Jughead is sure, before handing it back to him.

He knows he should say thank you, but something- pride? shame? both? - keeps him from doing so. Instead he shuffles his feet and fixes his eyes firmly on the ground, hoping she will leave him alone. But she doesn’t. No, she _apologizes_.

“I’m sorry about that. Reggie is just mad because you read better than him and because Archie likes you better. And I was gonna come up and whack him for you like Archie does, but then I got tangled in the bushes…” her voice trails off as she gestures behind her, where Jughead can now see swathes of the pink and yellow and white fabric still clinging stubbornly to the scraggly branches.

The image of Betty caught in the brambles is, for some reason, disproportionately hilarious to him and he has snorted before he can stop himself. He winces then, because he’s sure he’s gone and offended her after she had done something so nice for him. But to his surprise, she bursts into laughter herself. “It wasn’t until I said it that I heard how silly it is,’’ she chokes out between giggles. “Trapped by my own ‘grandiloquent’ outfits.”

He winces again at the remembrance of his behaviour to her the day they met, but when he finally looks at her, her eyes are twinkling as she proudly says, “I looked it up”, and then starts laughing again. Her mirth opens something inside him that was slowly rusting closed and his own laugh bursts forth, shocking and delighting her.

Impulsively but sincerely, Betty flings her arms around him. “You’re going to be my friend, Jughead Jones, whether you like it or not” she declares. And then, gesturing to the book in his hand, “You’re the only other person I know who reads Nancy Drew.” As if this alone settles the matter, she grabs his hand and marches back to class with him.

Neither of them mentions the mysterious disappearance of Reggie’s new sneakers which ‘cost more than Trashcanhead’s house’ (no argument could ever be made for creativity when it comes to Regginald Mantle), nor do they speak of the reappearance of said sneakers, firmly caught in the bushes behind the school, along with faded scraps of tulle and lace… but Betty starts spending her lunch hours with Jughead and Archie, and Jughead flips the angel painting back around.

 

Archie’s mom does not ask Archie if he wants to come with her to Chicago.

Granted that he would not have wanted to, but she didn’t ask him even once, and this upsets him for a reason he does not himself understand.

He is almost 10 now and his parents seem to believe that this is old enough to require no consolation or even clarification. The whole thing is, according to Jughead, expeditious. This means that, with little fanfare at all, one day his mom decides to move to Chicago, the next day his mom decides to leave him behind, and two days later, his mom kisses him on the head and walks out the door. At which point, his dad orders a pizza and they watch bad reality tv together.

The day after she leaves, Jughead comes over, a rare occurrence for a Sunday, meaning that he knows, and when Betty sneaks through the fence as she usually does, she instantly asks what the matter is. Archie tells her, surprised to find that actually saying the words out loud somehow changes their impact, and in response, Betty sinks to the ground slowly, her eyes filling with tears.

But if sadness shuts her down, it has always woken Archie Andrews up and he leaps from his own seated position quite suddenly, startling both of his friends. “Come on,” he says, and marches inside.

His dad doesn’t stop him as he makes his way around the house, angrily throwing everything of his mom’s that she had left behind into a box, and so neither do Betty and Jughead. Instead, they help him erase her presence from the house, Betty shocked and Jughead terrified at how easily it can be done.

Archie leaves the box by the door to go to the dump in the morning and then he takes Betty to the fort for the first time and Jughead for the first time in a long time. Once there, Jughead carefully modifies the sign on the door to say: NO GIRLS- except Betty, and the three spend most of their time there from then on. They never play at Archie’s again. Fred wasn’t the one who organized the play dates.

(The box never goes to the dump. It sits by the door for a very long time and then, one day, it is opened in the search for an unchipped mug, and soon enough, everything else finds its way out into the house again. Archie is not the sort of person to ever close a box permanently.)

 

The beanie is the most reluctant gift he has ever received. He doesn’t know where his mom even found it and he does know that they cannot afford it. But he had singed his hair a couple of days ago and Jellybean wanted to go to the movies tonight.  However, his mom refused to go if he didn’t ‘cover up the proof of his delinquency’. When he told her that he didn’t have any hats anymore, she had marched out the door and he’d thought the matter finished. When she came back with the beanie, she’d told him that Jellybean didn’t know about The Incident- she always said it like that too, like it was capitalized- and she was not going to have him disappoint her too.

Then she walked away before he could even defend himself. Not that there was much he could say that he hadn’t already said. She believes that he tried to burn down his school. He insists it was an accident. In reality… it was somewhere in the middle. He’d only had the matches in the first place, because every boy in the 5th grade it seemed could start a fire but him. But when the fire had first begun to spread, for just a minute he had wanted to let it....

And all it took was that one moment of apathy to convince the teacher who showed up just then that he had done it on purpose and guaranteed him a stint in juvie and a mark of arson on his record.

Betty said it was ‘profiling’. Archie said it was ‘whack’. His guidance counselor said it was ‘troubling’. His dad said it was ‘bullshit’. But his mom said that it was ‘typical’ and Jughead hasn’t been able to breathe properly since. He feels as if he’s been walking a tightrope with his mom for a while now and it’s beyond exhausting. He’s beginning to wonder if just jumping off would be the better option.

It’s not.

At first, Jughead is disturbingly unaffected by all of it. He’s surprised but somehow also not. He’s hurt but somehow also not. If anything, he feels encouraged. The worst has finally happened... and he is okay.

It is almost a month later that he finds the mail. His dad barely feeds himself nowadays, let alone checks the mail, and it is a household task that hadn’t occurred to Jughead until now. There is a letter from his sister, but there is also a letter to his sister, and it is that of all things, that finally does it. It’s a stupid thing that Ms. Spellman always did with her students. She had them write a letter to their future selves and then she mailed it out when the student hit double digits. He actually had his kicking around somewhere. It’s a weird and frankly pointless and usually terribly amusing piece of Riverdale elementary education… and it is one he always thought he would share with his little sister.

It is this of all things, that finally does it. He goes to his room, packs a small bag, and walks out the door of his home that is not a home, wondering briefly how long it will take his dad to even notice.

He only goes back once, after he opens the letter from Jellybean. His Mom had finally found the pictures that she took at the drive-in the last time they went- the day she bought him the hat- and thought he might want some.

She had sent him two pictures. One was of the family and the other was just him and Jellybean. He only keeps one.

The other he puts in a box along with his mom’s and Jellybean’s clothes that he retrieves from the trailer. Finally, he finds the old beanie and puts it on again, this time permanently. Then he leaves for good.

(He meant to send the box to Toledo, but after he is informed that they have both purchased new clothes, he takes it behind the drive-in instead and burns it, the flames completely under his control this time. The box is still sealed for delivery. Jughead is not the sort of person to open a box once it has been closed.)

 

Betty had not meant to lose Jughead. It was not a deliberate decision. It wasn’t even that she valued Archie’s friendship more than his. If anything, Jughead was and always had been the better friend. But she was convinced that she was in love with Archie, and somehow, she just didn’t notice until it was too late. It is much easier to lose people than she had ever imagined.

Years later, she will kick herself because she _knew_ something was up with him that day, shortly after he had moved out, when she bumped into him at the diner. She was just too distracted to find out what. Archie and she had had a hangout scheduled, but he had obviously forgotten about her again. And when she went to remind him, she found Ginger Lopez draped in his lap.

Betty retreated to the only place she had back then: Pop’s. Seeing Jughead, she suddenly realized it had been a while since she talked to him and, inwardly determining to be a better friend, she slid in across from him with a cheery ‘hello’.

It was then that she noticed his vacant stare and that the mountain of food in front of him seemed untouched. But just as she was about to ask about it, the bell above the door signaled the entrance of none other than Archie himself.

He was out of breath and full of apologies. It seems he had seen her from his spot beneath Ginger and he had been chasing her ever since. He felt awful and would buy her whatever she wanted from Pop’s to make up for it. At the time, she had found it incredibly romantic, and had barely even considered the boy across from her in her preoccupation with the boy beside her.

Years later, she’ll wonder aloud why neither of them thought to stay in his booth. He will say nothing, and his silence will force her to admit that by that point she had seen him as a third wheel and was honestly hoping that Archie did too.

She does apologize to him before she goes to a different booth with Archie though, promising that the three of them would get together and hang out sometime soon like in the old days. He waves this off, however. “I’m becoming accustomed to the absence of human companionship, Betts.” But because his sarcasm conceals a pain and betrayal that only the most loyal hearts can know, he dodges the hug she tries to offer, and avoids eye contact with her in the hallways from then on.

Years later, she wonders what would have happened if she had fought for his friendship harder, if anything would have even changed. She shuts those thoughts down fast though. She doesn’t know how she would cope if it would have.

In a surprising turn of events, it is _him_ who first reaches out to _her_. He has heard about her internship in LA and stops by her table at Pops on his way to his own to let her know how excited he is for her. He was always far more interested in her writing ambitions than anyone else and his enthusiasm is like a breath of fresh air.

Years later, she remains glad he said something. If he hadn’t, she doesn't think she ever would have had the courage to invite him to sit with her that night let alone invite herself to sit with him after she comes back from the internship, her anxiety dissipating when he closes his laptop for her and insists on knowing everything. But more importantly, if he hadn’t said anything, she never would have asked him to revive the school newspaper with her.

 

Archie is the sort of person who believes the best of all people in all situations. While protective Jughead and even good-natured Betty had worried that the addition of a new member to the friendship would lead to their own removal, it had never occurred to Archie to fear uniting the two smartest people he knew, people who had, admittedly, always had much more in common with each other than with him. While anyone else might have at least considered the possibility of eventually becoming the odd one out, Archie’s predominant feeling sitting on the couch in the school lounge, watching his friends in an intimate moment he had not been invited to share, is total shock.

In an entirely unmalicious way, Archie had assumed that he would always guide the direction of the threesome. When he had first brought his two best friends together, neither of them had protested, beyond Jughead’s insistence that Betty remain classified as a girl and thus forbidden from the fort. When he had decided that Betty had cooties for all of 2 weeks in the third grade, Jughead had silently imposed the ban too, despite the fact that Jughead didn’t believe in anything he couldn’t see, let alone an idea perpetuated by Reginald Mantle. Betty had not fought the separation either, spending the two weeks finishing the Hardy Boys series and carefully cataloguing all the reasons Nancy Drew was better, patiently waiting for the day the boys would return and she could proudly present her evidence. And when he had slowly lost touch with Jughead, Betty had dutifully followed behind, while the boy himself voiced no dissent at the loss of his companions.

He supposes a part of him has always believed that he is the only thing keeping them together, that without him, Betty and Jughead would not even look at one another, let alone choose to spend time in each other’s company. Perhaps that is true. Or perhaps, connections like these happen anyway despite the interference of the most meddlesome friends.

Either way, they’re the strongest writers in their grade and seemingly the only ones who want answers about Jason Blossom. That, at least, would have always brought them together. In reality, their friendship with each other actually makes far more sense than their individual ones with him ever did, but Archie is caught off guard nonetheless.

He’s stunned and confused… and upset. It upsets him, and he hates that it does, because what kind of friend does that make him? But ever since he’d watched them walk away from the lunch table without him, “What we’re attempting is a stealth operation, Archie. If we go in there with the entire Scooby gang, forget it, we’re compromised,” heading out together on the first ‘stealth operation’ that he had not orchestrated himself- let alone been invited to join- a nasty sensation that felt a lot like jealousy had been rattling around inside him.

Each time that Betty turned to Jughead for comfort rather than him, or Jughead sent a sardonic look right over his head to her instead, Archie felt it lurch inside him, like a perpetual need to throw up. Even as Jughead switched to _her_ side of the table, snitching fries off _her_ plate and sneaking sips from _her_ milkshake- a habit that Archie had always hated when he was the victim of it- Archie found himself biting back angry, unfamiliar words.

It all came to a head rather suddenly. Jughead is sprawled on Archie’s bed, typing furiously at his laptop, while Archie checks himself out in the mirror. The whole scene is familiar, lacking only Betty’s less than surreptitious gaze on him from the house next door.

He glances toward the window then, out of habit, and is surprised to see Betty already there. Her eyes, however, are glued to the screen of her own laptop, reading something. Suddenly, she giggles and whips her head toward his room, but her eyes do not go to him for even an instant, but rather over his head- a feeling that is becoming all too familiar. He turns toward his bed, in time to catch Jughead’s own laughter, a sound that had become all too unfamiliar. He hates that she is the only one Jughead laughs for now.

“Hey.” Jughead abruptly looks up at him, his brow furrowed. “You okay, man?”

“Of course I’m okay,” Archie snaps. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

In response, Jughead just gestures to his face. Confused, Archie turns back to the mirror, and is shocked at what he sees. There’s a reason people associate jealousy with the color green. Archie looks sick and unnatural- _ugly_ in a way that horrifies him and causes him to stumble back from the mirror a couple paces.

He sinks down on the bed beside Jughead as silence ensues. Archie can tell Jughead has something he wants to say but is afraid to, and he himself cannot think of a single word. So it is quiet for a long moment, until Jughead stands up and blurts, “Do you want me to stop dating Betty?”

It is the best thing he could have said, because Archie is surprised and almost painfully relieved to find that he does not, in fact, want that. He shakes his head slowly and says, “I just don’t want to lose you.”

It’s the truth at the same time as it is a lie, but it is also the perfect thing to say, because Jughead is switching schools and fighting his ever-present abandonment issues all over again, and he had desperately wanted to hear someone say that to him- maybe even needed to.

For the first time in their long friendship- longest one he has by 17 days- _Jughead_ is the one who steps forward and hugs _him_. He doesn’t say anything after it, and neither does Archie, both silently grabbing game controllers and settling down in front of the TV instead. Archie meets his eye for a second though, and gives him a terribly exaggerated douche-bro nod. In response, Jughead presses his hands to his chest. “We now return you to your scheduled programming of mutually suppressed emotions.” Then he grins at Archie and something loosens in him. Of course, it doesn’t just disappear, but it loosens, and, for now, that is enough.

 _That_ was a good night. The mystery was over even if it hadn’t been completely solved and the aftermath was put on hold and, if you squinted, you could almost believe that they were six again. That the wallpaper was wood, and that they were holed up in the tree fort, back when the only serious concern either boy had was whether their fathers would remember the fort password when they came to get them for lunch.

It is the last time that Archie hangs out with Jughead alone without a green leather snake haunting his every move.

 

Jughead had asked Betty once, jokingly, if anything scared her. She had responded gravely that she was terrified of being alone to which he had soberly agreed. He will discover that the reason she is afraid of being left alone is because she is afraid of herself, and she will learn that the reason it scares him is because he actually knows what it feels like. They will both learn that those fears never really go away.

They learn it the hard way. Jughead learns it somewhere between the moment he watches Archie spit the words Betty hadn’t had the guts to say to him herself and the moment he impulsively presses his lips to the wrong girl. Betty learns it in a dark and unfamiliar parking lot, her hands wrapped tightly around herself as she waits for her mom to pick her up, the last to leave- except for the boy she is sure is watching to make sure she gets home safely, so terrified of her getting hurt and so unaware that he is the only one that can truly hurt her.

They learn that the fear doesn’t leave. Instead, it lurks quietly in the background, in some kind of twisted hibernation, only to emerge stronger than ever. And the loneliness is all the more crippling for having been sure that it had been eradicated this time.

They’re friends, though. They’re friends and the air has been cleared and there’s no hard feelings and everything is fine and they’re _friends_. He’s been occupied with his perfectly legit school club and it’s not that he doesn’t want to help her with the paper again, it’s just that he’s been terribly busy with his novel lately (she hasn’t seen his laptop in months) and it probably wouldn’t be a good thing for Alice Cooper’s daughter and the Serpent Prince to run the school newspaper anyway.

He is lying, but she lets him, cause they’re _friends_ , and isn’t that what friends do?

His laugh changes. It’s grittier now, angry and stilted. His smile turns predatory and his speech is full of more snake references than even seems possible. He warns her one day that Sweetpea has threatened to put a snake in her locker, if she doesn’t pull back on her articles. As her _friend_ , he recommends she lay low for a bit.

He is her friend and he does not know her. He is her friend and she does not know him. It is much easier to lose people than she had ever imagined.

It’s Archie’s idea to involve Jughead with the investigation they have reopened concerning the Black Hood. New evidence has come to light that he may hail from the South Side, and “he can be our eyes and ears on the inside, Betty!”

They are friends and there is no feasible reason why Betty could say no, and so instead, she is back in that dark parking lot, tightening her pony tail and forcing her hands to stay open, as she enters the one place she had promised everyone- her mother, her father, Jughead, Veronica, even Archie for that matter- she would never go in again.

He has to be summoned for an audience. As if he is royalty. Although, she supposes that here he is. She wonders if that’s what makes the difference.  

He looks tired and hard. He looks more like his father’s age than his own, and her heart clenches as she furiously blinks back the tears she swore she wasn’t going to cry anymore.

It is awkward. The bar is busy and loud, but Betty is very conscious of how every pair of eyes keeps darting in their direction. Jughead steps forward as if to hug them, before stopping mid stride, while Archie holds out a hand to shake and then thinks better of it. Both of them look to Betty then, and she settles on a jerky wave.

“Hey Jug. How have you been?”

He relaxes, leaning back and running his hands through his beanie-less hair. “I’ve been good. And yourself?”

“I have been well also,” she replies stiffly.

Silence settles over the three, all unsure how to proceed. Archie, ever the one to fill silence, begins to chatter. “I have been less than well honestly. Veronica and I are not in a good place right now and I am so lost in Math class and also we think maybe the Black Hood is back and has ties to the South Side any comments?”

Jughead doesn’t say anything for a long minute and, apart from a hissed “Archie!”, neither does Betty. When he speaks at last, his voice is tight and his words almost menacing. “And why are you telling _me_ this?”

“We figured you could be our guy on the inside, and-“

Jughead cuts Archie off, his anger radiating from him so strongly that both of the Northside teens take a step back, “And what? Hand over one of my own to the North Side preppies?”

“No!” Betty’s own anger startles her. His own? Preppies? How dare he? “Bring a psychopath to justice!”

“Your definition of it, you mean.”

“My defini- what? This man tried to kill Mr. Andrews, Jughead!”

“Oh yes, and that potential loss keeps me up at night, really it does.”

Archie breaks back in then. “Hey! You owe my dad everything!”

“Yeah. My knight in shining armour, he was, Arch.” He says the nickname as if it is an insult.

“At least he wasn’t too plastered to walk straight,” Archie shoots back and Betty gasps, stepping between the two boys and placing her hands against Jughead’s chest to keep him from… what? Was he actually going to punch Archie?

Her brain helpfully supplies that this is the first time she has voluntarily touched him since the last time she had been in this bar, and she has to take a moment before she can think of her words. “So you won’t help us then?”

He’d relaxed at her touch, and his voice is soft now. “I can’t, guys.... Not if he’s part of my family.”

“You know, I don’t know when you got such a screwed-up idea of family,” Archie starts, but stops at Betty’s hand on his chest now.

“Let’s go, Arch. Please? Can we just go?” Her voice breaks a bit at the end, and Archie instantly softens.

“Of course, Betty. Thanks for the “help” Jughead.”

They could just leave. They should just leave. They’re friends, and that’s what a friend would do, right?

But she doesn’t. Because she’s never been Jughead’s friend.

“You know what the worst part is, Jug? The worst part is that in your blind desperation to hold onto your newfound family, you can’t even see that you already had that.”

Only then does Betty turn to leave, the sadness that has clung to her like a shadow- or like that damn jacket- weighing her bones down like lead. But if sadness shuts her down, it has always woken Archie Andrews up.

He marches toward Jughead with such anger that Betty is genuinely afraid that she’s gonna have to pull them off of each other again, just like she had to back when FP first got fired.

But Archie seems to think better of it. He stops quite abruptly just before he gets within arm’s length of Jughead, whose fingers are curled and body tense, who seems in that moment entirely alien to her. Instead of whatever Archie had been planning to say or do, he turns around completely, his back now firmly to Jughead, and walks away. And somehow that’s worse.

But because he is still Archie Andrews and because his anger conceals a pain and betrayal that only the most loyal hearts can know, he can’t resist one final shot, albeit an indirect one.

He turns to Betty when they reach the door and responds to her final statement. “No. You’re wrong, Betty. The _worst_ part is that in his blind desperation to hold onto his “family”", Archie’s voice drips sarcasm in a way Betty hadn’t had the heart to, “he’s lost it.” And then- the trio now a duo with a permanence that had never been there before- Betty and Archie walked away, and Jughead let them go.

There was no anger anymore, no sadness, no fear- barely even a noise beyond the door of the White Wyrm thudding softly with their exit. It was only when they were safely hidden in the truck that Archie finally broke down and the scream that had been welling in Betty for months tore out of her throat and Jughead froze in the middle of his staged nonchalant departure for home as he realized that he no longer had a place to go home to. That, even though he was surrounded by family, he was also somehow for the first time in his lonely life, truly alone.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Ugh. I don't even know guys. I got the line 'he already had a family and he lost it' in my head after a rant following episode 10 of season 2 and this is what happened....
> 
> As far as I am aware, it never says anywhere that Jughead wore the beanie all his life and I wanted to try something new for the age old mystery of it, so I think this should work. If I am wrong, feel free to let me know.
> 
> As well, I am aware that my kid Jughead is a weird mix of believable and unbelievable, but I like to think that he was a total prodigy kid. Like he had all this potential and genius inside of him that withered away along with everything else from his childhood. Isn't that better/ worse?
> 
> Let me know what you thought! Or send me prompts for these crazy kids! I want to write but I can only come up with super angsty and depressing things...


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